


The Bridge

by Kanthia



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route Spoilers, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 06:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20990519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanthia/pseuds/Kanthia
Summary: After Myrrdin: Claude catches Byleth, in a rare foul mood, by the fishing pond.





	The Bridge

Well, the thousandth year in the life of Garregh Mach had sure started out as a giant steaming pile of wyvern crap, hadn’t it? What with the Empire digging in her heels, and the Kingdom in disarray, and the commoners and nobility alike realizing that not only was this war the real deal but also that there are a host of other fun things that come with a prolonged conflict: famine, disease, internal strife, a generally depressive mood settling in on everyone as they started to wonder if this was just how things were going to be forever.

And maybe it would be; hell if Claude could ever be called an optimist about humanity’s ability to solve their problems nicely or discreetly.

So when Teach stumbled back to the monastery it had been a Goddess-given breath of fresh air -- hope, genuine _hope_, for the first time in five long, tiring, incredibly shitty years. Walked up the stairs like it was a regular Monday morning and _somebody_ was being paid by the Church of Seiros to tutor Ignatz in Derdrian hit-and-run tactics. Waltzed back into their lives and picked up like she had never left. Meandered home into their hearts like she belonged there, and damn it, she kind of did.

And just like that she settled back in and resumed business as usual in the middle of a fucking war, right up to and including tutoring on Mondays, and it turned out that a little routine was all they needed to turn things around: Raphael and Hilda heading a crew that went about picking up rubble on Friday evenings, Dorothea running a choir, Marianne and Lorenz tending to the horses. She organized sparring tournaments and card games and deep philosophical debates. There was laughter in the dining hall and interest in the training grounds, and suddenly the war was shifting in their favour.

Perhaps it was foolish of them to centre all of their hopes on one person, but Byleth had that magnetism about her that nobody could really ignore. She’d walk into a room with her pale hair and bright eyes and neutral expression, always looking like she was chewing over a grand and private thought, and everyone would know that she was there in the way she lit up the dust suspended in the air about her, and feel like a better tomorrow was possible with a little elbow grease and love.

\-- So it’s shocking, disconcerting even, when Claude catches her alone at the end of the fishing dock, sitting with her feet in the water and no bait on her hook, looking listless and -- sad? As sad as Byleth can be without something truly world-shattering happening to her, a subtle sadness that Claude has learned to recognize through the terrible things he’s witnessed by her side.

“You know,” he says, shucking his boots and sitting next to her, “You’re not going to catch much without baiting your hook.”

Her eyes flit to him without much of a turn of her head, and in her patently neutral expression with those pale, pale eyes Claude swears, for an instant, he understands the true nature of the Goddess -- and then the moment passes.

“Claude,” she says, flatly.

Byleth is a woman of remarkably few words, thoughtful about what she chooses to say, soft-spoken and intelligent. She lets silence be her punctuation and asks pointed questions to make complicated subjects seem simple. At first, people nattered about in her presence to fill the silence she created; but now, they flock to it, the pocket of peace she carries with her.

So Claude chooses to meet her in the middle, and gets to the point: “You not coming to dinner?”

“I’m not in the mood to celebrate.”

This close to the dining hall, the sounds of revelry are clear as dawn, and they have much to celebrate: they’re into Imperial territory, after all, having seized the Great Bridge of Myrrdin in a stunning come-from-behind victory that had showcased the combined power of Claude’s resourcefulness and Byleth’s tactical genius. The Ashen Demon is alive, the Crest of Flames has shouldered its way into Adrestia, and the Empress should damn well pay attention!

And yet --

Claude had seen it, and his battalion as well; and Seteth had seen it, and Cyril, all of them aloft on wyverns: a cache to the north, guarded and glimmering. Byleth, with her preternatural sense of those sorts of things, detached herself from the army and raced towards it, swift and light-footed with the Sword of the Creator at her side like a warrior-heroine of a lost age -- then, running into enemy cavalry, raised that same sword and struck with intention to kill at the fools who thought to stand in the path between her and victory --

“Ferdinand,” Claude says.

“Ferdie,” Byleth says, an acknowledgement.

The memory was still clear after five years, of one Ferdinand von Aegir, listless and unshaven and distraught, pacing about the stables in the fresh hell that was Edelgard’s declaration of war; and Byleth begging him in her calm and insistent way to just _trust her_, that she could help him, that they _needed_ him; and Ferdinand insisting that his heart was still in Adrestia, that he could sway Edelgard back to the light, that such was his right and his duty as a nobleman.

“He was,” Byleth starts, then purses her lips as though searching for the right words. “He was a child.”

“I mean, not to split hairs, but --”

“He was a _child_, and I promised Rhea to protect the students of this school.”

“Okay, but --”

“He died a meaningless death.”

Yeah, Claude won’t argue that one. He’d watched the whole thing unfold -- Byleth realizing a moment too late just who was on that horse, Ferdie partway through some stupid heroic speech while the Sword was busy cleaving flesh from bone, and he died before he hit the ground with a brilliant spray of blood and intestinal fluid. Claude had watched the microseconds tick by in which Byleth allowed herself to mourn him, before she’d sprinted off for the treasure that was their initial goal.

It was a trinket, a trifle, useless; it hadn’t been worth the lives traded for it.

A peal of laughter erupts from the dining hall, and a drunkenly giggling couple dispatches themselves from the building towards a more private place -- Dorothea and Sylvain, or perhaps Lorenz -- off to put their misery aside for a few moments. Claude wonders about their dwindling supplies of prophylactics and alcohol, and the pinched skin between Byleth’s eyes relaxes the slightest bit.

It had all started with Ashe, really. Some idiot had put that kid, still heartsore and confused about the bullshit the church had put poor Lonato through, on the front lines of a reserve force meant to stop the Alliance from meeting its reinforcements at Aillel. The rest of them had five years to learn to kill friends, but Byleth was still groggy from her nap at that point and -- well.

“I came up the stairs,” Byleth says, half-heartedly jigging the line. “You were there, and you looked so much -- healthier. Thicker. I thought, maybe I heard wrong, maybe there isn’t actually a war. Maybe, if Claude is looking so well…”

The silence that follows is almost apologetic, or at least embarrassed. Both of them know that Claude was unwell during his days at the monastery, suffering miserably from the stress and pressure of keeping secrets among a group of Fodlan's best and brightest; that war suited his skill-set and demeanor much better than peace; that in times of war, commoners starve first.

“...You looked the same,” Claude says, instead. “Glowing like you do, and it made me feel. Well.” He looks out over the water. “Something stupid. Something like hope.”

He wants to say, _She’s there, isn’t She? -- The Goddess I refuse to believe in._

He imagines her responding, _yes, I have been here all along._

“Hope’s a good beginning,” she says, which all things considered is close enough. Then she twists her mouth and says, “I wish…”

Claude waits for her.

“I wish I could turn back time, and find a way to save him. -- Them. -- All of them.”

There’s a strange little moment where Claude genuinely believes that she’s tried that, turned back the clock over and over and over again, watched Ferdinand die in dozens of different ways before finally coming to the realization that some people are too stubborn to live.

But Claude doesn’t believe in a Goddess -- just Byleth, who says what she means and otherwise prefers not to mince words.

The couple stumbles out of the bushes, rumpled and looking rather pleased with themselves, and heads back to the dining hall. Byleth reels in her line and hoists herself to her feet, leans her rod against the side the fishing shed. He watches her back as her shoulders drop, then she sucks in a breath and squares her shoulders and the world starts turning once again.

She is their guiding light, after all; her fears and regrets must be kept secret.  
  
“Shall we head to dinner, then?”

He follows her, regardless.

**Author's Note:**

> i am a teacher at a boarding school and this game keeps being mean to me
> 
> find me on [tumblr](http://kanthia.tumblr.com/)


End file.
